The Smart Game Format (SGF) is a computer file format used for storing records of

board game Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a co ...

s. Go is the game that is most commonly represented in this format and is the default. SGF was originally created under a different name by Anders Kierulf for his SmartGO program. The current version of the format is 4. The main purposes of SGF are to store records of played games and to provide features for storing annotated and analyzed games (e.g. board markup, variations). It is a text-only, tree-based format. The tree structure makes the addition of variations simple. It is also text-based instead of

binary Binary may refer to: Science and technology Mathematics * Binary number, a representation of numbers using only two digits (0 and 1) * Binary function, a function that takes two arguments * Binary operation, a mathematical operation that ta ...

for the sake of portability. Games stored in SGF format can easily be emailed, posted or processed with text-based tools. Most

Internet Go server An Internet Go server is a server that allows players of the game of Go to play against opponents online. The two fundamental types of Go server are ''real-time'' servers and ''turn-based'' servers. History The first Go server that started o ...

s and

Go software There is an abundance of go software available to support players of the game of Go. This includes software programs that play Go themselves, programs that can be used to view and/or edit game records and diagrams, programs that allow the user ...

from 1990 support this format.

About the format

An SGF file is composed of pairs of properties and property values, each of which describes a feature of the game. A partial list of properties appears below. There is no strict checking of the contents of these tags, so it is possible to put any text into the result tag for example. Variations are nested in brackets, and also usually assigned letters. The first branch (variation A) is the main branch. This notation stems from

Newick format In mathematics, Newick tree format (or Newick notation or New Hampshire tree format) is a way of representing graph-theoretical trees with edge lengths using parentheses and commas. It was adopted by James Archie, William H. E. Day, Joseph Fels ...

Coordinate system for points and moves

The first letter designates the column (left to right), the second the row (top to bottom). The upper left part of the board is used for smaller boards, e.g. letters "a"-"m" for 13*13. The author intentionally broke with the tradition of labeling moves (and points) with letters "A"-"T" (excluding "i") and numbers 1-19. Two lower-case letters in the range "a"-"s" were used instead, for reasons of simplicity and compactness. The upper left corner as origin of the board corresponds to the way most modern computers represent screen coordinates to simplify integration of text and graphics.

Supported games

Games currently supported are Amazons,

Ataxx ''Ataxx'' (アタックス) is a strategy video game published in arcades by Leland Corporation in 1990. Two players compete on a seven-by-seven square grid. The object of the game is for a player to have a majority of the pieces on the board at ...

Backgammon Backgammon is a two-player board game played with counters and dice on tables boards. It is the most widespread Western member of the large family of tables games, whose ancestors date back nearly 5,000 years to the regions of Mesopotamia and Pe ...

, Blokus,

Byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...

Chase Chase or CHASE may refer to: Businesses * Chase Bank, a national bank based in New York City, New York * Chase Aircraft (1943–1954), a defunct American aircraft manufacturing company * Chase Coaches, a defunct bus operator in England * Chase Co ...

Chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

DVONN ''DVONN'' is a two-player strategy board game in which the objective is to accumulate pieces in stacks. It was released in 2001 by Kris Burm as the fourth game of the ''GIPF'' Project. ''DVONN'' won the 2002 International Gamers Award and the ' ...

, Exxit,

Focus Focus, or its plural form foci may refer to: Arts * Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in South Australia Film *''Focus'', a 1962 TV film starring James Whitmore * ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based ...

, Gess, GIPF, Go,

Gobblet ''Gobblet'' is a board game for two players designed by Thierry Denoual and published in 2001 by Gigamic and Blue Orange Games. Gobblet was a finalist The final of a competition is the match or round in which the winner of the entire event is dec ...

Gomoku ''Gomoku'', also called ''Five in a Row'', is an abstract strategy board game. It is traditionally played with Go pieces (black and white stones) on a Go board. It is played using a 15×15 board while in the past a 19×19 board was standard. Be ...

Renju ''Renju'' (Japanese: 連珠) is a professional variant of gomoku. It was named renju by Japanese journalist Ruikou Kuroiwa (黒岩涙香) on December 6, 1899 in a Japanese newspaper ''Yorozu chouhou'' (萬朝報). The name "renju" comes from th ...

, Hex, Hive,

Hnefatafl Tafl games (pronounced avl also known as hnefatafl games) are a family of ancient Nordic and Celtic strategy board games played on a checkered or latticed gameboard with two armies of uneven numbers. Most probably they are based upon the Rom ...

Jungle A jungle is land covered with dense forest and tangled vegetation, usually in tropical climates. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past recent century. Etymology The word ''jungle'' originates from the Sanskrit word ''ja� ...

, Kropki, Kuba,

Lines of Action Lines of Action (or LOA) is an abstract strategy board game for two players invented by Claude Soucie. The objective is to connect all of one's pieces into a single group. The game was recommended by the Spiel des Jahres in 1988. Rules Goal The ...

Neutron The neutron is a subatomic particle, symbol or , which has a neutral (not positive or negative) charge, and a mass slightly greater than that of a proton. Protons and neutrons constitute the nuclei of atoms. Since protons and neutrons beh ...

Nine men's morris Nine men's Morris is a strategy board game for two players dating at least to the Roman Empire. The game is also known as nine-man morris, mill, mills, the mill game, merels, merrills, merelles, marelles, morelles, and ninepenny marl in English. ...

, Octi, Philosopher's Football,

Plateau In geology and physical geography, a plateau (; ; ), also called a high plain or a tableland, is an area of a highland consisting of flat terrain that is raised sharply above the surrounding area on at least one side. Often one or more sides ...

PÜNCT ''PÜNCT'' is a two-player strategy board game. It is the sixth release in the ''GIPF'' project of seven abstract strategy games, although it is considered the fifth game in the project. It was released in 2005. ''PÜNCT'' won the ''Games Maga ...

, Quadrature,

Reversi Reversi is a strategy board game for two players, played on an 8×8 uncheckered board. It was invented in 1883. Othello, a variant with a fixed initial setup of the board, was patented in 1971. Basics There are sixty-four identical game pieces ...

(Othello), Sahara, Shogi,

TAMSK ''TAMSK'' is a two-player board game designed by Kris Burm. It was originally published in 1998 as the second game in the ''GIPF'' Project series of abstract strategy games, although it was later dropped from the series in favor of TZAAR. Playe ...

Tantrix ''Tantrix'' is a hexagonal tile-based abstract game invented by Mike McManaway from New Zealand. Each of the 56 different tiles in the set contains three lines, going from one edge of the tile to another. No two lines on a tile have the same ...

, Trax, Tripples, Tumbling Down,

TwixT TwixT is a two-player strategy board game, an early entrant in the 1960s 3M bookshelf game series. It became one of the most popular and enduring games in the series. It is a connection game where players alternate turns placing pegs and ...

Xiangqi ''Xiangqi'' (; ), also called Chinese chess or elephant chess, is a strategy board game for two players. It is the most popular board game in China. ''Xiangqi'' is in the same family of games as '' shogi'', '' janggi'', Western chess, '' c ...

YINSH ''YINSH'' is an abstract strategy board game by game designer Kris Burm. It is the fifth game to be released in the ''GIPF'' Project. At the time of its release in 2003, Burm stated that he intended it to be considered as the sixth and last gam ...

and

ZÈRTZ ''ZÈRTZ'' is the third game in the ''GIPF'' Project of seven abstract strategy games. The game features a shrinking board and an object that promotes sacrifice combinations. It is impartial: since neither player owns on-board pieces, maintain ...

Format Versions

The first version of SGF, FF was conceived by Anders Kierulf in 1987. It is Appendix A in his Ph.D. thesis. FF was written by Martin Müller in 1993. The current version of the SGF is FF by Arno Hollosi, and is supported by most current SGF readers. FF was never made public. The format has been published under the Open Content License. Current development status (2016) is "not active".

Limitations

* Language: Go is most widely played in China, Japan, and Korea, but the SGF format has no way of specifying different translations for text. * Metadata: Only a limited, fixed set of metadata can be present, for example, SGF has rank fields, but no way to represent the ranking system in use.

References

External links

*
Go Problems

Sensei's Library Sensei's Library (commonly referred to as SL among Go-players) is an Internet website and wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contai ...

SGF Editors

SGF Web Viewers

SGF Tools (file conversion, syntax checker, etc.)

SGF Parsers
{{Go (game) Computer file formats Computer-related introductions in 1987 Go (game) software